Urban Speed Limit. What Should It Be?

20 mph signs going up in the streets around me.

I’m largely glad, safer for people esp kids. Safer for animals too. I’ve seen several lifetimes worth of broken animals on the roads. Badgers, cats, deer etc. I mean when was the session of Parliament where we decided that the eradication of hedgehogs was ok? That cars were so important that we could do without them? Yet largely gone they are.

However, I have to admit, 20 seems like a challenge at times just to keep it that low. So is it the right speed and if not, what is?

 

IMV this should be dependent on issues around , is the area near a school , shops , busy area , wildlife etc . For want of a better word a "risk assessment" on each urban area .

 

20.

But only punish by points or fine or awareness course if they go above 30.


If you're travelling 33 mph then a child walks out 10m ahead, react, hit the brakes and you'll be doing 20mph when you hit them. That's enough to seriously injure or if you're unlucky. Worse.

If you're travelling 23mph then a child walks out 10m ahead, react, hit the brakes and you'll be doing under 10 mph when you hit them. This is bruises or bumps. If you're lucky nothing at all.

 

What about if you’re only doing 10pm when you hit the brakes?
Or 5?
My wife got points for doing 24 in a 20 !

 

You actually end up going -5mph and into reverse, crushing a pedestrian between you and the car behind.

 

So the limit is 30 to all intents and purposes then?

 

Life, including driving, is a balance between safety and efficiency. There would be the least amount of incidents at 1mph, but the cost would be too great. You need to accept some accidents to ensure everyone gets to where they need to be without taking a day to do it.

I think we’ve generally got the balance right at the moment. I don’t think anyone should be doing more than 20 outside a school during the day. But at midnight, often no one should be doing much less than thirty.

 

Driving down the Finchley Road at 20 during the day is a pain but, to be fair, the traffic seems to move freely and there must be stats that says driving at that speed will save lives

my issue is that it remains that speed at 0400 in the am.

Surely the way forward on busy A roads is a variable speed limit depending on time of day

 

It’s on a road like that you really notice it, though the average speed on it has probably been well below 20 for years. It may be about getting used to it, but I find most accelerations seem to take me over 20 and I’m then having to brake again.

I feel that 25 could have been a compromise for a major road like that, but they probably felt that was a more difficult number to stick to with an old speedometer. If that’s the reason it’s increasingly less of an issue as new cars usually have an option for a digital speedo and old ones may also have a satnav displaying the speed.

 

My mate got points for doing 23 in a 20.

 

Don’t lie. You don’t have any m8s m8 .

 

On tight, residential roads with lots of parked cars, 20 is plenty. But the blanket implementation of 20 on all roads is insane.

I was driving through Southall/Greenford recently, on a wide road with a bus lane at 7pm. Nothing in front of me, but forced to do 20mph due to LB of Ealing's policy.

It was ridiculous. It defeats the point of using a car.

I prefer the idea of 30mph plus speedhumps/20mph to be used in high risk areas eg around schools, in areas of high pedestrian traffic etc.

 

Since picking up 6 points and two fines for doing slightly over 20mph in the same week I now travel at 15mph on the (thankfully rare) occasions that I drive in London. This means that I get to enjoy watching other motorists raging at me when they eventually manage to zoom past at 19 mph. Going so slowly also means that I tend to spend more time just looking around at what's going on - rather than focussing on the road ahead. I've nearly gone into the back of the car in front several times, almost knocked off countless cyclists and only narrowly avoided driving into a skip on Cromwell Road. I'm sure it is only a matter before I kill someone and when I do it'll be entirely the fault of Sadiq Khan. I hope you're pleased with yourself Sadiq.

 

Twice in my life I've had kids run out in front of me. Twice I've stopped easily and safely. Both times it was on 30mph roads.
Crack down HARD on mobile phones, the 20mph thing is a complete joke.

 

I think that's the aim of these ludicrous restrictions - to get everyone walking or cycling because travelling by car is so bleeding miserable

 

I live in zone 3 and try and avoid driving as much as possible because the roads are always snarled up and getting above 20 is more often than not impossible. When you do end up on a relatively clear road, 20mph does seem utterly ridiculous in most cases. I think 30mph is fine and more of a natural speed, it’s probably not backed up by any science, but trying to stick to 20 is actually hard and seemingly takes away some of your concentration. I drive everywhere with Waze now just so I’ve got the speed and the associated warnings to remind me.

 

As someone who rides a bike, 20 in urban areas is great. On faster roads, there are so, so, soooo many fast, close passes by absolute morons. At least around towns they can't buzz past completely oblivious that a foot is not enough space to leave.

Because we've given up spending money on anything in this country the roads are in the worst state I can remember in 35 years. Holes and cracks everywhere. The general state of the roads in this country is laughable compared to France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and even Spain and Italy are better than here now. We are accelerating backwards at a rapid rate. Repair the roads properly and everything would be safer.

People spend tens of thousands on their big cars, their pride and joy, and then get to drive them into holes the size of craters. Even the best suspension and tyres can't survive all those hard jolts. Just smashing up their 40 grand motors day-in, day-out on third-world road surfaces.

 

And if it’s not the 20mph limits that get you, then it will be the LTNs and residential roads where you’re fined for driving into them that will get you if you’re not treating driving like defusing a bomb.

 

Equally ridiculous are 50mph restrictions on M4 in Wales
I got done doing 56 in average speed zone
Excuse on paperwork it's a zone to improve air quality .... Just by the belching at the time Port Talbot steel works

 

Must be great living in an area that's choked with traffic and fumes where people play second fiddle to the mighty gods in their cars and vans.

Somewhere along the line, urban planning in this country got seriously warped and we're left with the mess we've got now, and towns and cities where a significant minority think they are being discriminated against if they can't go where they want, when they want in their solo tin box.

Don't get me wrong, I own a car and drive too, but the way people drive through places where people live is too often completely idiotic. Flying down rat runs, slaloming round the bollards and speed bumps. Any effort to get drivers to treat the places that people live with at least some respect gets a thumbs up from me.

 

I don’t have an issue with the concept, it’s just you have to have your wits about you to avoid going down one and and it can make driving quite stressful. That’s why I use Waze even if I know where I’m going, because in theory it won’t send you down one.

Slightly related, but one thing I find quite annoying about certain car drivers is that a lot of the pedestrianisation that happened because of Covid in places like Soho can’t happen on an ongoing basis, because it’s blocked by local residents who are worried they won’t be able to park their cars.

 

Yeah, I get that. I do a fair bit of driving abroad and it can be hard not to get caught out without Waze giving real-time speed limit and traffic restrictions. Once drove into an Italian city on a Wednesday morning not realising that it was market day and it wasn't allowed.

I still get caught out because I forget to pay the Dartford Crossing charge. And when I'm approaching London I find the Congestion Charge signs confusing.

But, in the case of London, that's partly the cost of wanting to drive into one of the biggest and most congested cities in the world. There really shouldn't be the sense of entitlement that there sometimes is.

Unfortunately, most short-sighted people think that having their shopping high streets clogged up with cars is good for business when study after study shows that places would be far more prosperous if they were pedestrian and 'active-travel' friendly.

 

I mean, they would be wouldn't they? Telling people they can't travel at certain times or to certain places - that's a pretty big restriction of freedom and not the path I want to travel.

I take your points about people driving like assholes and dangerously passing bikes etc, but why not punish that, instead of making people drive at 20mph down a wide empty street with no hazards

 

Not sure that was called for.

 

Yet he’s called you, a man with allegedly no m8s, his m8. This is Waiting for Godot level desperation. Or do I mean Last of the Summer Wine? I always confuse the two.

 

No one is telling anyone they can't travel to certain places at certain times. They are saying that if you want to drive to some places at certain times there may be a cost. The idea that driving is some kind of unchallengeable right, and that any attempt to dissuade people from clogging streets is and unthinkable infringement of their rights is nonsense. You can't drive across the Dartford Crossing without paying money. But you can go the long way round if you find being charged money an unacceptable infringement of your right. This kind of logic is the same as saying it's a big restriction of freedom charging thousands of pounds to fly to Australia. No one is stopping you doing that, but it'll cost you.

And the issue with saying things like 'wide, empty streets with no hazards' is that it's not backed up by real-world evidence. It's an emotive and skewed interpretation of both the argument people are actually making and the real world. Because where are these places? Even in towns/cities like Watford, St Albans, Harpenden, Hemel there's double-parking reducing wide roads down to a single car-width, inconsiderate parking and congestion caused by one person sitting in one car. I do get that being slowed down to 40mph on the M1 at midnight when it's empty is irritating, though.

Punishing people for driving dangerously is not easy so I'd love to hear your practical ideas for how to do this when a car passes a cyclist going twice or three times the speed and is away in seconds. People who post videos on social media of awful driving get all sorts of abuse and that's not something I'd do myself.

 

My favourite fact is that Samuel Beckett occasionally drove Andre the Giant to school

 

Apparently they liked to chat about cricket.

 

Presumably the geniuses at Three Rivers council read one of those studies before deciding to close Ricky high street to traffic. It was never exactly Bond Street but since it was pedestrianised all of the banks and what useful shops there were have closed. The good news is that Rickmansworth now has plenty of vape shops and tattoo parlours

 

And when are you booked in for your ‘I luv vapes’ tat?

 

Hate to break it to you, but the banks and useful shops haven't closed because Brian can't park his Talbot Sunbeam in the high street, leave the door unlocked and nip out to get 20 B&H and a copy of the Mail.

 

I’ve rewritten this Douglas Adams classic for you.

And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a heavily tattooed girl, vaping on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.

 

The speed limits are not the problem, it is the people who speed or don't concentrate on their diving that are the problem. Catch and punish the people driving badly then the roads would be safer for everyone.

 

used to live in the same road as GT in Ricky as a kid. Loved the walk with my old man to “town” on a sat am to get an iced bun from the bakery, a trip to Smiths to get a footy magazine, Strawberry fields to get the latest Jam single and the corner sweet shop to stock up for game day. We’d then go to the station phone box, dial home, wait for the pips and my mum would come pick us up

Not the same for kids today going there to buy a strawberry flavoured vape

 

Everyone else on the road is a worse driver than me.